Smile, you're under arrest!

Broadcasting & Cable reports that Fox has figured out a way to take schadenfreude to a new low. They've just wrapped production of a new mid-season replacement show, tentatively called "Smile, you're under arrest" where the producers dupe people with outstanding warrants into thinking they are part of some great thing, only to discover that they are carted away in handcuffs at the end:

“It is a reverse Punk’d,” says Fox President of Alternative Entertainment Mike Darnell. “Instead of the worst day of your life and then a joke at the end, this is the reverse. This is the best day of your life, and then we arrest you.”

One of three set-ups just shot in Arizona features the cops luring a criminal to a movie set with the promise of making him an extra and paying him a couple hundred dollars. An elaborate film set is staged and filming begins on a faux movie. The set-up continues as the director then gets mad at the lead actor, fires him and replaces him with the law-breaking extra.

The scene escalates with the fake director introducing the mark to a supposed studio mogul and continuing to create this dream-comes-true sequence. Finally, all the participants are revealed as officers of the law, and the criminal is apprehended (before signing waivers to let the footage be used in the show).

Thanks to Fox, we might be only a few years away from "the Running Man" becoming a reality.

How soon before we bring back the glory days of Rome? Throw a bunch of criminals into an arena, add a few lions, cover it from every angle, sell it on pay-per-view and make a fortune.